As home opener looms for Yankees, will homers fly like early last year?

Noah K. Murray/The Star-LedgerThe Yankees pitchers learned to adjust to their initially homer-happy ballpark last year. NEW YORK — CC Sabathia shrugged his shoulders as he described getting used to pitching in Yankee Stadium. He spoke of reaching a point of acceptance about the place that Yankees pitchers, whether they want to or not, will work at least half of their games.

Then, he punctuated his remarks with what’s become an ubiquitous phrase: “It is what it is.”

Except, in the case of Yankee Stadium, what that is remains unclear.

Here’s what’s known: The Yankees open the second season in their new home today against the Angels. A year ago, the ballpark debuted as a launching pad for homers, inspiring a wave of theories about why for $1.5 billion, the Yankees forgot to include some gravity in their shining new park. Then, the calendar turned to June, and despite the overwhelming first impressions, the homers simply stopped jumping out of the park.

Here’s what’s not known: everything else. Specifically, should the Yankees expect the same home run pyrotechnics that plagued the new stadium for the first two months of existence? Or should they brace for the more temperate offensive environment they enjoyed the rest of the season?

“We still don’t know,” Sabathia said. “It was flying out of here early and as the summer went on it kind of calmed down. We still have to find out what it is. But you can’t really change the way you pitch.”

Sabathia hit on perhaps the most important lesson the Yankees took away from the early part of 2009, when it would have seemed appropriate to play the crashing symbols and cannon shots of the 1812 Overture on a constant loop.

During the first two months of last season, 87 homers left Yankee Stadium, many coming on what appeared to be innocuous fly balls.

Yankees designated hitter Nick Johnson was playing with the Nationals at the time, with his only early exposure to the ballpark coming via television highlights. Meanwhile, Sabathia was leading the Yankees pitching staff, his ballpark experiences coming with what he saw up close.

Despite their vastly different perspectives, both came away with the same indelible image of the stadium’s earliest days: Johnny Damon swinging then dropping his head in disgust at what he believed off the bat was a fly-ball out, then going into a home run trot as he watched the baseball disappear into the third row of seats in right field.

The images were enough to make a pitcher think twice. And early in the season, Yankees manager Joe Girardi said he sensed that the dizzying rate of homers may have crept into their minds.

“I think it probably took them three or four starts each before it was out of their mind,” he said. “It’s realizing that you can’t change who you are. It’s just go out and pitch. You realize that both teams are playing in the ballpark. Our guys understood what they needed to do.”

Yankees pitching coach Dave Eiland said he sensed a shift in attention amongst the team’s pitchers, a change in mindset that he said made a difference.

“Guys put it out of their head and started focusing on executing pitches, and that’s when we really took off,” Eiland said. “It’s like moving into a new house, you’ve got to get used to it. But they’ve adjusted to it.”

The numbers back Eiland’s account.

Greg Rybarczyk, an engineer by trade, runs hittrackeronline.com, a website that charts every home run hit in the major leagues. Through the use of estimated trajectories, he’s able to gauge the true distances of home runs, which allows him to spot trends in which parks are more suited for home runs.

When Rybarzcyk reexamined his numbers at the end of last season, he noticed that Yankees pitchers had done a much better job than their counterparts in keeping balls from leaving Yankee Stadium.

Through the first two months of games at the Stadium, the Yankees accounted for 45 of the 87 homers hit, or only three more than they had allowed. But the trend shifted drastically over the final four months, when the Yankees outslugged opponents, 91-59.

“It was probably in part somewhat due to a conscious decision by the Yankees pitching staff to try to pitch away from right field,” Rybarczyk said.

Apparently, the Yankees succeeded despite playing with a stacked deck. According to Rybarzcyk’s data, 29 percent of the home runs hit in Yankee Stadium in 2009 would not have been a homer in the majority of baseball’s other 29 ballparks, well above the league average of 16.

And as expected, according to ESPN’s park factor calculations, Yankee Stadium proved to be the most homer friendly venue in baseball. But it also cut down on doubles and triples, essentially balancing out the offensive effect of homers.

Indeed, despite the high number of home runs, Yankee Stadium as a run-scoring environment was actually slightly less friendly than the cavernous Oakland Coliseum, which has always been regarded a pitcher’s park.

Now the big question: Will it play that way this year?

Rybarzcyk believes the Yankees pitching staff should benefit from a year of experience and will be better prepared to combat an early-season home run derby. Girardi wonders whether the demolition of the old Yankee Stadium will affect wind currents, and thus the carry of batted balls in the new stadium.